In the meantime, he cleans and saves bones from his victims. The murderer, whose actions and thoughts are known to the reader throughout the novel, has stolen an antique book from the local library, which chronicles several horrible, gruesome murders he is re-enacting those murders, and he leaves clues at each scene for Rhyme and Sachs so that they can save the victim if they figure out what the clues mean fast enough.

In a moment of boredom, he finally skims the report, and is impressed by the gutsiness of Amelia Sachs and her attempts at preserving the crime scene he reluctantly agrees to help only if she is part of the team.Īs the novel progresses, the characters, which will be in the subsequent novels, are introduced, and a special relationship develops between Rhyme and Sachs Sachs follows Rhyme’s instructions at the crime scenes and takes his place.

Rhyme, is a brusque, grumbling, bitter man, and is awaiting the visit of a doctor who is going to help him commit suicide he has no plans to look over the report, but in order to get rid of the officers, agrees he will consider it. Rhyme is considered an expert on evidence, not only from his previous work at the police department, but also because of his book, The Scenes of the Crime, which is considered the crime scene bible. Meanwhile, Lincoln Rhyme, who previously headed the Central Investigation and Resource Division (IRD) in the police department before a beam fell on him and left him a quadriplegic, is visited by a former co-worker, Lon Sellito along with his partner, Jerry Banks, requesting that he look over a crime scene report. On the day when thousands of UN delegates are arriving in New York for a convention, Amelia uses her best judgment to eliminate any screw-ups at the scene by forcing a train to stop, blocking off a 6-lane avenue filled with traffic, and infuriating an Officer Peretti, who condescendingly dresses-her down in front of several other officers who have arrived at the scene. To her horror, it is a hand, attached to a body which has been buried vertically the ring finger had been “whittled away and a woman’s diamond cocktail ring had been replaced on the bloody, striped bone.” As the first officer on the scene, she remembers her training, and how to preserve the evidence at a crime scene. The first book in Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series, The Bone Collector, begins when 31-year-old Amelia Sachs, during her last two hours in patrol (she is transferring to a desk job due to her arthritis), is sent to an empty field near a railroad bed to find what has been reported as a body, and discovers what looks like a twig sticking out of the ground.

The bone collector novel